


falling like a tear stain (only for your cold ghost)

by Ymae



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: (it's in a dream but still), F/F, Fix-It, Near Death Experiences, sanvers reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 09:20:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18246944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ymae/pseuds/Ymae
Summary: Maggie wakes up from a nightmare of Alex drowning. Naturally, she calls to check up on her, to reassure herself that she's still alive.Only, it's been four months since she's last seen her ex-fiancée. It's lucky that Maggie knows Alex has had worse than a random midnight distress call.





	falling like a tear stain (only for your cold ghost)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there, I just wanted to let you know that I rewatched 2x19 and had a lot of feelings so I had to write something. It's pretty short and mostly unedited, but I hope you'll enjoy anyway :)

Struggling for air. Breathe, breathe. Then nothing.

A string of bubbles drifting to the surface. Cold water all around, squeezing the air from her lungs. All noise bleeds from the world, all feeling. She closes her eyes. She wishes she could think clearly, could have this one last glimpse of light before she vanishes forever. She doesn’t hear the steps coming closer, the hard sound of boots on concrete. She doesn’t see. She feels herself beginning to fade, being violently drained of life.

Then, suddenly, air so cold it hurts. _Hurts._ She struggles to breathe. Her whole body aches. She’s so cold. 

Touch bleeds back into her world slowly, and she feels the rough concrete ground, the burn of the air on her skin. Warmth. Warm arms holding her up, helping her breathe. She sputters and coughs but there are hands squeezing her own tightly, still so gently, and fingers in her hair, a kiss on her forehead.  Sound. 

— _alive,_ is what she hears. And then, a voice so familiar she feels herself exploding in relief. _You held on._

She doesn’t know how she gets her vocal chords to work—she _burns,_ with coldness, exhaustion, the unimaginable few seconds that separate her from death—but she does, spluttering, breathing hard, hard, _I held on._

A second one, someone, whispering so quietly her ears just barely catch it, _You held o_ _n._

Maggie wakes up alone. She starts up with a cry, brushing a cold hand through her greasy hair. She takes in her surroundings, white medical beds, one ruffled, dark blotches of blood, sweat, a heart monitor that hasn’t been turned off beeping to the worst image of the world, a clean line, no life, no life, no _life._

It was just a dream.

Alex in that glass box, that cage, the few inches of glass separating her from air. Maggie, too late by seconds.

Why is there a medical bed made up for Alex if she died in Maggie’s arms?

Maggie would like to think that Alex felt her being held onto in her last moments of life, but the doctors said she drowned in that tank. The doctors said they’re sorry. The doctors hate her. Alex was one of them. Maggie took her from them. A few seconds.

The doctors, the DEO, all that fades from her mind. There’s just Alex, her cold body, the weak imagined pulse that was no pulse at all. _She’s alive!_

_Maggie, no, no, she’s dead, Maggie, I can’t hear her heart—_

_She’s alive—_

_She’s gone._

Maggie’s lungs refuse to take any more air, air that was meant for Alex, air that’s abundant, air that had no reason not to keep Alex’s heart beating. No reason other than that Maggie failed to rescue her.

_There are things I need to say._

No things said, no more, not ever. Chances that were crushed to dust in one single lapse of judgment.

Maggie stares at the monitor, beeping to the rhythm of a dead heart.

If she’d just held Alex tighter, maybe she could’ve felt it. If she’d just never let go.

 

* * *

 

Maggie wakes up.

For a brief moment, she thinks it’s just another nightmare—she coughs and coughs until her throat burns, but the air coming through the window is cold and unforgiving in its purpose to circulate oxygen into her lungs.

Alex, Alex.

Maggie knows, she _knows_ what really happened, but she’s crying, and doesn’t seem to stop. Her hands don’t listen to what her thoughts are trying to say. She fumbles for her phone on the floor. Her tear-blurred eyes squint against the brightness, and she pulls up the dialer, blindly typing in Alex’s number, digit by digit, green button—

_calling…_

She shouldn’t have deleted the contact from her phone, what if those few seconds of dialing were too much? What if they were the line? Life or death? Dead heart or a beating one?

Maggie’s heart is pounding erratically, but for those few seconds of suspense, dial tone, _calling,_ she’s dying inside.

“Alex?”

Maggie hears the sound of breathing, a sleepy voice she can’t understand. Her relief is so great she almost drops the phone. Tears drip on her pants. She’s shivering.

“Maggie?”

“Alex,” Maggie sobs, pressing the phone to her ear like it’s a lifeline.

“Maggie? Maggie, are you okay?”

“Am I okay, are you kidding?” Maggie whispers. “You almost drowned, Danvers, I still can’t believe—I can’t—please tell me you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” Alex assures her, her voice a touch too calm for Maggie’s taste.

“You’re lying,” she accuses her.

“Okay, maybe I’m not a hundred percent fine! God, Maggie, what’s wrong? It’s two am. Where are you? Are you hurt?”

“ _You’re_ the one who almost drowned,” Maggie insists. She slides back onto her bed, the phone pressed to her ear, and draws her blanket tight around her.

There’s a brief pause. “Oh,” Alex says softly. “You were having a nightmare.”

Maggie brushes a hand across her tear-stained cheeks. “Yeah,” she admits. “I guess I was.”

“About me drowning. Rick… in that tank… but Maggie, that was forever ago. I’m fine now.”

“Two seconds, Alex,” Maggie says, “and you wouldn’t have been fine ever again.”

Another pause. “I know.”

“I can’t lose you, Alex.”

“You’ve already lost me. We’ve already lost _each other._ ”

Maggie feels bare, exposed. She knows—she _knows—_ something about the way she’s acting is totally off, and she knows everything, but it’s like there’s a glass wall between her and what she’s meant to do, and she can’t bring herself to go back behind that wall. She can’t bring herself to hang up the phone. “What do you mean?”

“We broke off our engagement four months and twenty-seven days ago,” Alex reminds her, and Maggie knows that this time she doesn’t imagine the tightness in her voice. “Apart from that one time you asked me for the passport, we haven’t had any contact. We haven’t… I don’t know… why now, Mags? Did something happen at work?”

Maggie melts when she hears the nickname. Something in her just sizzles and drops down into her heart and makes it expand five times its size.

“Work’s fine,” she replies. “It’s no fun without you, though. I don’t even remember why I took this job in the first place.”

“To make a difference,” Alex suggests quietly.

“Maybe I’m tired of trying to make a difference. Maybe I just want to make things better for myself for once.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Okay,” Maggie admits, staring at the blanket, kneading the soft fabric with her fingers. “I don’t.”

“I _miss_ you,” Alex says suddenly, her voice so tight it makes Maggie tense over the phone. “Mags, I really miss you. I really, really miss you. I don’t even remember why we broke up.”

“To be true to yourself,” Maggie suggests brokenly.

“Maybe I don’t want to be honest for once. Maybe I just want you.”

“You don’t mean that.” They keep repeating things back to each other, and it doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter at all, as long as Maggie can keep hearing Alex’s voice.

Alex is silent for a second. “I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe you’re right.”

Maggie smiles slightly, absurdly, because right now she’s agreeing that perhaps Alex doesn’t want her as much as she thinks she does. “I always am.”

“I’m sorry,” Alex says suddenly. Maggie can hear blankets being ruffled, something clunking to the ground. “I’m going to hang up now.”

“Wait!” Maggie shouts. It echoes in her empty apartment. “Wait, I love you.”

The last thing she hears before the lines goes dead is the tightness in Alex’s voice finally breaking. A beeping tone interrupting her mid-sob.

_Call ended._

 

* * *

 

_Ringing, ringing. Hard knocks on the door._

Maggie startles out of her dreamless sleep. 

The knocking stops. Through the thin apartment door, Maggie hears steps turning away. 

“Wait!” she yells. She struggles to free herself from her blankets. Finally, she stumbles out of bed, tripping over her phone on the floor. She hurries to the door, and opens up, breathless. 

Alex turns around. “Maggie?” 

“Alex,” Maggie breathes. There’s a moment in which there is no time at all, when Maggie’s thoughts drive on a hundred different train tracks simultaneously. She self-consciously remembers her messy hair, the comfy pants, the tank top, bare feet, dried tear tracks on her cheeks. 

She sees Alex as though she sees her for the first time. Hair cropped short and equally as messy, simple, dark blue shirt, sweatpants. Puffy eyes lined with dark shadows. A gaze streaked with distant pain and urgent longing.  She sees Alex as though she’s never seen her before. She sees Alex as though she’s had her every day of her life, and the lives before that, and still can’t get enough of her. 

Because, in the end, that’s what this feels like, doesn’t it?

Maggie’s legs threaten to give out, and she leans against the doorframe weakly. “You came.”

“It took me all night finding you,” Alex says. Maggie’s been so fixated on her she didn’t notice how close they are, close enough to touch. 

She feels like a mess. She’s a mess. She didn’t want to be a mess around Alex again. She wanted to have that; the amicable breakup, the good breakup, nothing to soil the sweet, painful memories. 

“You could’ve just texted me, Danvers,” she says, lopsided grin and all, but she’s not chill, and she’s not hard, not around Alex. Maggie brushes a shaking hand through her hair. 

Almost as if unconsciously, Alex mirrors the gesture. Her hair is so short now. She’s so beautiful Maggie’s heart might explode out of her chest. 

Alex looks at her like her thoughts mirror Maggie’s, too.

Maggie missed having someone look at her like she’s a galaxy, shining and with billions of stars all of her own. Some dark matter, too.

“I didn’t want to text you,” Alex replies. “I was so sure Kara would find out somehow and maybe talk me out of it.” She pauses. “Because there’s nothing about what I’m about to say that really makes sense. But Maggie, you make sense to me, and after last night… you know I still get nightmares about drowning. Suddenly I was just _so_ scared I’d never get to tell you again.” 

She reaches out tentatively,  taking Maggie’s hand in her own, drawing lines into her palm with her fingers. 

“I love you. I never stopped.” Two single tears make their way across Alex’s cheek. Her voice is fragile, cracks. “I just keep expecting to get to have a first with you again but you’re not there. And it _breaks_ me every time I think that our breakup might have been our last first. So I had to come. I don’t have any solutions, and I honestly don’t know how to apologize, or if you regret calling me, or if you want to—I don’t know. Me.” 

Maggie smiles. “Are you done?” 

Alex nods.

Maggie leans in.

Their lips meet.

There’s a brief moment where that’s all they do, chaste and fleeting like a first kiss, but then Alex’s hands go to Maggie’s face, holding on so gently, and Maggie’s hands go to Alex’s elbows, and then her hips, and then Alex is pressed against the wall, and they’re kissing.

Hot desperate, like that’s all they’ll get.  Needy, like they want  so much  more. Sure and familiar, like  _hey, you. I’m never going to let you go again._

Slowly, never breaking the kiss, they stumble into Maggie’s new apartment. And now Maggie knows why she’s felt so  discontented here. It was never properly broken in. 

They fall onto the bed, giggling. Their kiss breaks reluctantly.  Alex’s finger brushes gently over Maggie’s dimples. 

All her stars light up at once. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Molecules" by Hayley Kiyoko.  
> Thank you for reading, I'd love to know what you think :)


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